Duel Upon a Midnight Dreary - Kaila Irons vs Mystra Midnight

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

The gauntlet felt tight.

Anathemous had always thought that Beskar was nigh indestructible, that only a specialized forge could break and melt the sacred metal of a people with whom she'd once shared a home.

Until hers began to creak.

"nngh!"

The young sith opened her fist, gloved fingers clawing at the air, instinctively trying to wriggle out of her own gauntlet to no avail. She'd never faced a foe so strong, nor who cast through their weapon the way she did.

"Rise!"

And she was running out of time.

She fought through the pain and weakened laminanium in her bones with the help of her remaining Exo-muscle, planting her own spear into the ground and then raising her injured fist in the air. A crude metal was wrapped around her burnt wrist, a red and rusted looking thing even despite it's black paint. Cortosis, the last of her old armor.

Anathemous twisted the opposite wrist to lay flat before her, and slammed her cortosis gauntlet into the coiled lightwhip as if she were a great smith swinging her hammer in the forge, producing an ear ringing clash which echoed over the rumbling mountainside.

A sharp pain lanced through the remaining nerves soon after, as the doppelganger's spear tore through the already wounded flesh and ripped apart the nylasteel coils in her Exo-muscle, the ends splitting into dozens of threads like exposed wire. The young Darth was knocked to her knee by the impact.

She was bleeding, burnt, broken. she would die on Vanqor, unless she ends this two pronged attack immediately. She could not fail Tamsin here, not again, not when she was this close to an answer. She could not allow herself to be returned to Quinn in a bag, nor leave Kirie unprotected.

Anathemous looked up at Mystra, shaking with rage.

As the doppelganger sped towards her, the spear lodged in the Darth's arm began to sink deeper as she pulled her rage and pain inward. And as she took a deep breath through her teeth, even the spirits could feel their power being drawn into Darth Anathemous.

"RAAAAAAAGH!"

The power exploded outward in the form of several Darkshears which shot out of her body soon as the False Mystra neared, inky black spines sprouting out of her body like that of sea urchin, each twice the length of a saber and dripping with the nigh unhealable venom of the dark side.

Mystra was no longer fighting Anathemous the knight, methodical and brave,

But the savage beast for which she was named.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

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Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

The Lightwhip went slack, and the charge of its golden plasma fluttered and then died out as Cortosis struck it. As it went slack and slipped from the vambrace Mystra stumbled backwards, and the crushing force ceased.

For moment Mystra had, the young sith in her grasp but it was fleeting as she saw as she stumbled backwards. The ringing from the clash of crotosis against the Mandalorian armor reverberating through her ears.

She almost thought everything was lost until she felt it in the air the spear colliding into the sith. A faint smirk crossing her little face, as she reeled in her dead whip. She spoke once more as she did so in almost gloating tone through her heavy labored breaths.

"You fought well, but the dark consumes use all eventually. It takes back what it is owed, what was stolen from it by the will. You tried to steal my soul, so I am going to banish yours to the dark so it can never return."

She spoke as the child looked up at her in rage, her broken frame wanting to fight on but in Mystra's eyes there was a look of seeing this a million times. Like she had seen so many reach this point where they wanted to fight but couldn't anymore. There was an almost pitying look on Mystra's face as she looked at Kaila on the ground.

"Rest well."

She said as the doppelganger rushed the woman before Mystra. Then Mystra's eyes went wide, as the young sith rose and from her sprung spears of midnight black like a great puffer fish. Striking the Doppleganger that disappeared in a puff of violet ichor the red shoto saber dropping to the ground in a clatter as it disengaged.

Mystra could feel the shift and the power flooding into the woman. Feeling the rage, the pain, and regret of what would be lost if she died all flow into the woman. A rage demon, it seemed more then the sister was possessed by an earth-shattering monster. Mystra instinctively took a few steps back as spears flew in her direction as well. One slamming into her left shoulder and another into her right thigh.

It ripped through flesh and bone tearing muscle and shattering bone. Unlike the sith Mystra did not have metal to support her. Blood spewed from her leg and shouldered as she fell to the ground catching herself. She could have absorbed the spears but that would have cost her more than she had so instead she put an aura of protection around herself to keep the spears from obliterating her completely.

Her right hand dropped her whip and yanked the spear from her leg. "aaaaaaaaagh!" she screamed and seethed through her gritted teeth. Her leg trembled and quaked as she attempted to go back to standing using the spear to like a crutch.

"Why won't you just DIE!" As she screamed that another bolt of lightning was pulled from the sky and was shot at the creature that use to be the sith girl.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

Darth Anathemous looked upon her with hatred in her eyes.

But just as Mystra no longer beheld that stubborn girl, Anathemous did not see Mystra as she was; only the enemy, a faceless avatar of everything she had fought so hard against. Fate, be it her own or her sister's, and the endless struggle therein.

She did not even acknowledge the fallen doppelgänger as she ground her teeth, nor as she ripped the bent gauntlet from her arm. She stood slowly, spines retreating into her body, and kicked her spear, disengaging the telescopic hilt which retracted into her hand in a series of rhythmic clicks. Never once did she take her eyes off the foe, relying on the force for awareness.

Even as the lightning struck, Anathemous acted on pure, bestial instinct. The force screamed at the edge of her senses, and just before it's baleful white glow touched her form, the monstrous knight flung her remaining hand skyward to intercept.

A thunderous ✱CRACK✱ tore through the air and deprived her of hearing momentarily.

The bolt had been intercepted just barely in time by a shimmering shield, the weight of which pressed into it forcing her knees and elbow to bend. She was Atlas, holding up the very sky, muscles shaking, chest heaving.

By her own strength, she would have died. She should have died. But the dark spirits shackled by writhing tethers of dark energy sustained her, just enough, some dropping to their spectral knees as she drained them dry.

"...I... refuse...!" she finally answered.

Each breath was a battle of it's own, and the shield was beginning to fracture above her.

"Because death is my GOD. Not yours!"

But she let it break. The center grew thin as lightning continued to strike in one continuous beam as if Mystra's god truly had ordained her execution. But as it broke, the lightning began to trickle in, forming a swirling funnel into her. It hurt, it hurt so badly, but in her pain and rage, and the power of this ghostly triumvirate, she absorbed it.

"Carnifex shackles me no more!"

The veins around her eyes grew dark, she was running out of time, out of power to hold it back.

It had to go somewhere, lest she perish.

"And no sister of mine will bow to the gods EVER again!"

She leveled her hand on Mystra, crackling electricity visibly coursing along her arm, and as the beam's tail neared the ground at last, her barrier shattered. Anathemous extended her index and little finger at Mystra, a foul tuning fork which began to channel the lightning. Purple, then sickly magenta as it reached them.

Thunder boomed across the land.

And from this tuning fork of flesh, she unleashed a piecing beam.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

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Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

"Your sister's maker has defeated death!"

Mystra screamed back through her pain and whirling winds leaning heavily on the spear. As lightning struck out like a righteous fury. The sith caught it though and as she did Mystra slumped a little more on the spear holding her up. Her orange fiery eyes flickering in and out.

Then she heard the name Carnifex….

The name itself meant little, of course she knew of his legacy and legend. Yet she did not care like her maker, she knew of his origins or rather those that led up to him. Those that crafted him into the failed emperor he was. Carnifex had been this sith's God once and just like the men that made him not one of them could challenge the maker.

"Just like those before you girl, you worshiped a self-proclaimed sith'ari. Yet you spit on the one true power, the one they dare not face. The one your former god's master's master exiled from the sith because they knew they could not beat her. Your former god's makers and your new god cannot defeat the Witch'ari."

She watched in defiant fury finally pushing herself up to full standing as the lightning swirl around.

"If you knew the maker you would know bowing is a death sentence."

The lightning spread through the air and Mystra closed her eyes. It struck into her, flowing over her body. The searing pain flooded through her nerves as she took the almost red shifted lightning head on. Her teeth clinched tight, and her jaw locked as the lighting burned over her blistering and burning skin. Nerve ending died and skin smoked and turned hard as it burnt, her robes melted into her flesh. The spear in her shoulder broke apart and crumbled to ash cauterizing the wound. The same with he wound in her leg.

The spear in her hand burnt away to ash and her legs gave out, dropping to her knees as her blacked burnt flash smoked. Her body was cold and numb as she could feel no more pain. As lightning began to subsided Mystra looked like a black statue kneeling on the ground before Kaila.

But then the eyes opened to and those eyes that had been flickering moments ago lit up like WHITE HOT supernova's. The left stump where a hand once been moved and slammed into the ground sending telekinetic wave through the ground cracking spinning out in a spiderweb pattern across the earth to Kaila's feet and beyond. As the ground cracked Magma started to spew up from the ground.

Then the statue that was Mystra's right hand reached up towards the sky. No words were spoken as her hand opened wide like she was reaching for an apple on a tree. As she did a swirling void started to appear in the spiderwebbed pattern on the ground in the magma pools forming. Tendrils of darkness rose up from them and began to reach out and grab at the malformed Kaila trying to grapple her and pull her into the magma.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Armor
Tag: Mystra Midnight

The Witch'ari should have fascinated her.

It was the first indication of who Sokar truly was, and her powers therein. The implications of such a title on their own would have sent her mind racing with possibilities and such grand fantasy.

But she was too far gone now.

She snarled like a beast as the witch charred and smoldered before her very eyes in a near blinding flash until the last of lightning coursed through her being and into Mystra's. The sith stumbled forward as it passed through, chest heaving, face marred by blackening veins and paling skin.

But Anathemous did not wait. She marched forward, carried by the dark rage which sustained her even now. Her limp arm was given the barest of attention; dragging her lightsaber across the skin in one shaky, but practiced, and agonizing motion which cauterized her bleeding wounds with startling speed and only served to fuel the anger carrying her forward.

Mystra was alive, for however long that would last.

She held the blade aloft, ready to strike her down and end this once and for all.

Just as she swung downward, the witch unleashed a forceful blast which shook and cracked the ground below her feet, causing the young Darth to stumble, lightsaber leaving a trail of molten slag in the ash as she missed, then fell backwards.

Tendrils of pure malice made manifest rose from the shattering ground and coiled around her leg, leaving noxious coils of smoke in it's wake as it began to melt her rubbery bodyglove and sear her flesh, rendering the sith immobile on the floor. The pit opened beneath her in a red glow, and for but a moment, Anathemous wondered if perhaps this was what it looked like to enter the nether. Perhaps she had already died, and truly been banished to the dark as Mystra promised.

But it was not in her nature to surrender.

She kicked and screamed, swinging wildly at the approaching tendrils even as they began to drag her towards the boiling pit.

Until a moment of grim clarity struck.

The ember of Vahl burned bright in her eye as she looked up at Mystra in determined silence. She bared her teeth, face twitching with rage as she willed the fire to her side. Flames grew, then shot up like solar flares from the magma's surface, lashing out wildly to break the tendrils which ensnared it's master, and at Mystra, to disrupt her concentration on the spell.

All the while, her discarded shoto began to drag itself from the dirt.

​

 

[Mystra Midnight]

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Theme: The Wolf in your Darkest Room
Tags: Kaila Irons

---

Her hand lifted to the stormy sky above Mystra's eyes flared like bright burning white stars. Her body felt no pain, only the cold numbness like the deep black abyss of space. Her death blow was approaching as her tendrils stretched out and turned her would be assassin away.

Her eyes did not flinch, or flicker just continued to look up into the storm past it deep into the black abyss of space. Like they were searching for something, an answer to a question that had not been asked.

Mystra did not look at the young sith as the tendrils began to pull her into the pits of the fiery entropy. She continued to look up at the sky, past it deeper into the universe itself. Reaching out the dark, offering up this one's soul as sacrifice.

"ᛁ ᚨᛗ ᛒᚢᛏ ᚨ ᛋᛖᚱᚡᚨᚾᛏ ᛟᚠ ᚤᛟᚢᚱ ᚲᚺᛟᛋᛖᚾ ᚷᛟᛞ ᛟᚠ ᛞᛖᛋᛏᚱᚢᚲᛏᛁᛟᚾ, ᛒᚢᛏ ᛟᚠᚠᛖᚱ ᛟᚾᛏᛟ ᚤᛟᚢ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛞᚨᚱᚴ ᚠᚱᛟᛗ ᚹᚺᛁᚲᚺ ᚨᛚᛚ ᛚᛁᚠᛖ ᚲᚨᛗᛖ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛋᚺᚨᛚᛚ ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ ᛏᚺᛁᛋ ᛋᚨᚲᚱᛁᚠᛁᚲᛖ."

Her lips dry and her voice raspy and exhausted as she offered up Kaila's soul to the dark, the deep abyss from which reality spawn and would one day return too in entropy the heat death of the universe. He rears could hear the young sith screaming and continue to fight against the inevitable. Mystra though was lost in her concentration and offering to the unseen dark.

As pit's of the inferno flared up high into the haze and gloom of the sky with he sith's rage swelling. At first Mystra did not realize what was happening as her tendrils burned away to ash mixing with the volcano's ash. She felt her control waning which caused her to pull her eyes away from the sky above.

She did not feel the heat of the fire as she felt only cold and numbness. Yet as her eyes glanced at the fires raging before her horror struck her eyes. She wanted to move and run but she couldn't what use to be her skin was to tight to move fast enough. She thought for a split second and reached out her hand towards where the sith was.

"Uikitri het berolak Ci fidafah chu yidevysht shuree!"

A combo spell of Hassat-durr and Tempest she called on all the elements around her from the great storm she had already created to her aid to strike at the sith with an unholy wrath. The ground quaked the, fires raged even higher and all around them, lightning and hail stormed down at Kaila and the winds began to swirl into ashen tornado's all around the area they were in.

It was the last gasp, Mystra knew what was coming as the dark showed her in the vision of what was to be, when she called out to it. The storm would be her last call to the nature and destruction she controlled hoping to inflict as much damage as she could on the raging beast coming for her soul. Yet it wasn't her last cruelty to inflict upon the young sith.

As ash and fire obscured the unmoving Mystra from visual view of the young sith she casted one last spell.

"Chu meni azza Ci meni chu, lat'lah shuree kuk Ci meni rish azza rish. Melo shuree res pafefo het yot shar ficl hai bez, yot kaot Ci man meni."

She saw her death and for that her body shifted and contorted, her appearance changed and shifted into a younger youthful version of herself. Her wounds were not healed but masked by the new skin she now wore. A perfect Mimicry of who she use to be.